The fishhook and fishing spear are among man's earliest tools. Archeological evidence indicates that the first Stone Age fishhooks may have been developed over twenty thousand years ago. These early fishhooks were made of bone and shell materials. As humans advanced, they constructed fishhooks from materials such as wood, bronze, and iron. The fishing spear is even older than the fishhook with archaeological evidence showing the use of spears from three hundred thousand years ago.
Steel fishhooks began to appear in the sixteenth century. Modern fishhooks are generally made with high-carbon steel, steel alloys, or stainless steel. Many fishhooks are also covered with a corrosion-resistant surface or with another coating. Fishhooks can be used to hold live or dead bait or can be added to lures (artificial devices that simulate fish prey).
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a “typical” single fishhook 101. The fishhook comprises a point 110, a barb 120, a bend 130, a shank 140, and an eye 150. The point 110 is the sharpened end of the hook that impales the fish through its mouth. The point 110 is also used to impale the bait used to lure the fish. The barb 120 is a projection on the hook that generally extends away from the point and is used to “secure” the fish to the hook. The bend 130 is a curved portion of the hook that extends from the point 110 and barb 120 and connects to the shank 140 of the hook. The eye 150 of the hook is a “circle” that secures the hook to a fishing line or to a lure, such as a spinner lure. The gap 160 is the distance between the point 110 and shank 140 of the hook. Fishhooks can be produced as single, double or triple fishhooks; the “single,” “double,” and “triple” designations indicate how many points and shanks are attached to a single eye. Fishing spears are generally simpler than hooks, often consisting of only a set of barbs attached to a shaft that is used to throw the spear.
Current fishhooks and fishing spears may be difficult to remove from fish that have been impaled by the fishhook or fishing spear. The barb is often the cause of this difficulty because it functions to hold the fish to the hook or spear. Some modern hooks are manufactured without barbs to make removal of the hook from the fish easier; these hooks, however, may not be as effective in catching fish due to the lack of the barb. Fishermen who desire to remove fishhooks from fish to release the fish back to the wild with a minimal amount of injury to the fish thus face a conundrum: using a hook with a barb may make the removal of a hook more difficult, but using a barbless hook may reduce their ability to catch and land a fish.